Canadiens cut three more players, Tinordi to London

Jarred Tinordi, the Canadiens first-round draft choice, is returning to the London Knights of the OHL.
Forwards Alain Berger, Brock Trotter and Philippe Lefebvre have been assigned to the Hamilton Bulldogs, leaving 40 players still in camp after Monday’s loss to the Bruins.

The Canadiens and Bulldogs will be on the ice 10:30 Tuesday morning in Brossard.

137 Comments

Yikes, a few games into the non-season with our management assessing talent and the “We’re doomed” squad is already out in full force. Go be Leaf fans for crying out loud! This team will be alright with you or without you.

so i went to the game yesterday.. and my gf got me siiick seats
my observations (which i know everyone holds in high regard)
Tinordi was really good… not very physically imposing but very defensively sound and made up for a lot of St-Denis’s errors.
Ghallager is one of the most intense players i have ever seen..
and it’s insane how he competes against guys that are way bigger
Gionta was mad pissed at the refs at the end of the game and seemed to give them an earful.
Pleks was good, cammy not so much
Trotter was a huge puck hog and put his team in very dangerous spots more then once
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The 2010-11 Stanley Cup was not won, but given

Red’s point, which many are apparently missing, is about standards and a culture of effort, team play and winning that really happened in our lifetimes, over and over, not the ancient Greeks.

It’s that culture and responsibility to carry the torch into the next generation that makes Habs special and unique. Do we win every year? No, of course not. But do we work harder and conduct ourselves better than any other team? Do we emphasize that our veterans work with the kids and teach them how to conduct themselves on the ice and in the dressing room and in private.

I am trying my damndest to teach my kid hockey in the Montreal tradition. Respect and help your team mates. Protect and encourage the smaller players. Show good sportsmanship, even when you lose.

I actually agree that Price is well served by protecting himself and his crease. In fact, Price`s size and strength are very big factors in helping to keep away potential garbage goal scorers.

I think there should be a stat kept, like a team + / – for goals scored and goals allowed in the blue paint.

a goal scored in the blue paint would be a +.

a goal allowed in the blue paint would be a -.

if the habs can improve their `blue paint` +/-, they will no doubt improve their 5 on 5 scoring.

I expect Max Pac and Cole to lead the way in this category.

if ANYONE can communicate with AK, he could add another 5-10 goals per season, and become that 30+ goal scorer we know he can be, by hanging around and battling to bang in those garbage, blue paint goals.

Habs hockey is “smart” hockey – we play 5 man defence, not just 2 – we move up the ice as a 5 man unit, we back check with 5.

Kings goalie was right in front of me the other night in the second period of Kings/Ducks game and the Ducks got two “paint” goals just through sheer persistence and wacking away at it. One guy (not the Palmieri goal) had his back to the net, made the lamest blind backhand shot along the ice you can imagine, but the crease was such a mess it just slid through everyone and scored. Kings were really frustrated.

Phil Esposito built his career on such goals. Let’s all try and watch for that this year, who has the stones to go in there and work it. They will be rewarded.

I need some help. I think the Habs of 75-79 were the greatest team I have seen play hockey. So in an effort to dissect the formation of this team I have been scouring the internet. Yes I have found all kinds of information pertinent to things like regular season record, playoff records, heck I have even found footage of them winnning the Stanley Cup 4 times! But for the life of me I cannot find preseason game information. If someone can please help me find this information that would be great, clearly it was at this stage in the season when Scotty Bowman was doing his finest coaching. I now recognize how important those games were as all information appears to have been sealed away.

Look in the index of Dryden’s “The Game” I remember him talking about pre-season games but I don’t think it was particularly systemic. Also Robinson’s memoir (Robinson for the Defense) (hilarious, by the way)

Back in those days the players coming up were maybe a bit more known quantities having been groomed by the coaches in Nova Scotia. I also don’t think the players trained as much over the summer. Training camp was really more fitness and getting into game shape.

Also try newspaper archives, though it may not be available online – they put everything on “micro-fiche” filmy stuff back then.

I bought my tickets as soon as they were available in HFX. Within a very short time they were sold out. Apparently sold out is a relevant term. A friend of mine went to the box office at the Metro Centre on a whim right before the game and snagged 4 tickets, 4 seats up from the Canadiens bench for $85 ea. I paid $64 for lower-upper bowl because that’s all that was “available”. Not exactly the way to endear fans to an event in future. Except me, I’ll go no matter what seat I get. But you get my point.

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I didn’t say you were lying, I said I don’t believe you.

So Boston got bigger and won the cup , Chicago where bigger went they won and now Flyers are way bigger add than Martin does not like anyone’s bigger then him and guess what we,re in trouble when Gallagers 5′ 8″ you,re best preseason players

Montreal has drafted 19 skaters in the past 3 years. No one drafted earlier than the 4th round was under 6′ and only Brendan Gallagher is under 5’10”. Even the majority of their undrafted player signings have been 6′ + players. Gauthier goes out and gets a second power forward in Erik Cole to compliment Pacioretty’s prescence and create a more forceful prescence in the Top 6. Puts Ryan White on a 1-year contract. He acquired a 6’+ centre in Lars Eller the previous year as well.

But do keep making things up if it makes you feel like you have a point.

Bang on SF09. As much as I don’t mind this team getting bigger at any given point in time, I too noticed sometime over the summer that PG has gotten the point and is working towards addressing it. There is definitely a pattern developing.

“DiSimone, who was a third round pick of the Washington Capitals in 2007, prepared for the sole purpose of conducting a Habs beautiful climb to the left of Tuukka Rask. The big Milan Lucic was after him and blew him in the neck.”

might as well start the day with people crapping on me, I’m not so sure about the Management we have in Montreal. it’s playoff management make the playoffs and we have a good team we already know that, we do have a good team, but wouldn’t it be nice after 18 years to be able to say. we have a great team, we don’t always have to win the cup. that’s never gonna happen again the league is too well balanced.
I look at the off-season, what moves did management really make to improve the team they brought in cole yes he’s a good player probably score 25 goals Pouliot and Halpern was scoring the same amount, so other than cole’s physical presence I don’t see any improvement goal wise maybe saved a little money.
they signed a defenceman that’s partically disabled he’s not just injured may play again may not and they let two of the best scoring defenceman on the team go. they could have taken that money and kept at least one of those guys. our back end would still be pretty good, right now we look weak back there maybe because it’s just pre-season. the signing of campoli yesterday will help but he’s no Hamrlik or wiz he’s young and could be real good in a couple of years when he gets use to our system. if yemelin pans out we’ll get by. all in all I think we’re good enough to be a playoff team a lot will depend on our 3rd and 4th lines. we can put a if in there if they can get it together we could have a real good team who knows have to wait and see.

The “it’s only the pre-season” folks are missing the point. We know it’s the freaking pre-season.

I haven’t seen much of the action and I haven’t made too many comments negative or otherwise about the team. But the pessimists are not anxious because we are losing but because they see a team that has serious problems; for example, our backup is not NHL calibre, and there are serious worries on D (Only PK and Gorges are solid at this point in time).

There are also good omens: Max Pac looks great; Gomez seems to be playing better; there are a few teenagers who will be good one day.

Shouldn’t worry too much about Budaj yet. In the stinker of a game vs. the Bruins, there was a very inexperience defense corps in front of him. Breaks in coverage, odd deflections, and just plain not knowing where his players are can play a major part in a goalie looking as bad as he did.

I thought he looked alright in one of his previous starts in the pre-season. Still not worried.

Oh please – if you want to talk “evidence”, at least mention that your “evidence” are stats and speculation, and that even stats can lie.

*Budaj played on a weak Colorado team (the one who thought O’Byrne was good enough after he couldn’t crack our regular dman lineup), so save % alone doesn’t tell the whole story.
*Colorado picked up a young gun from Washington, making Budaj expendable in their view – what a shocker!
*In those 90 minutes, he’s played with AHL-level dmen and forwards in front of him, which caused errors he wouldn’t normally see in the NHL. Whatev.

so the bulldogs have Bonneau, Henry, FitzGerald(sp?), Schultz, Conboy and the Habs have….sound of crickets…does anyone find that a bit strange…gonna be another embarrassing year as a Habs fans…maybe Price can get run over a few more times, PK slammed into the boards…etc, etc, etc…I cannot wait for PG and JM to be gone cause there is literally no chance of any other coach/GM combo ignoring this gaping hole on our team.

I know what your saying with the Habs lack of a player to be an enforcer, but if you haven’t noticed how hard Shanahan has been coming down with suspensions, I feel that having this sort of player will just end up costing the team in the end. The Canadiens don’t have 1 superstar player, they dont have 1 enforcer, they are a team that works on chemistry and “togetherness”. Last night, during the game, when Price got tapped after the play, you didn’t see just one habs player go after the guy, there were 3 or 4 players around them. If Detroit can be the team they are without an enforcer, I believe that the Canadiens can be that way too.

And if the Habs dressed any of those guys (well except Bonneau, he went to another AHL team) we’d have a guy sitting on the bench reading Car and Driver waiting to have a staged fight as that is all those guys are good for.

Henry does 10x more for the organization especially as captain of the Bulldogs and a mentor to the young pros on that team than he would ever do as some 4th-line grunt because there is no way he’s an NHL defencemen.

you missed my point, I was not saying we should dress one of those guys – I was pointing out that our organization feels like there is a need for those types of players on our farm team but not on our “real” team…Habs team has zero respect from opponents in the physical department because they don’t care enough about their own skilled players to “protect” them…if we are waiting for Shannahan to do it, it will be too late…3 or 4 players skating around you and asking you politely not to hit the goalie is not going to do it…some people just don’t freakin get it…

Has anyone else here exceeded the “quota” of free articles available at the Gazette website? I can’t read any stories now without getting a firewall pop up from the Gazette blocking the content and asking that I sign up for a $61 yearly fee. I have no problem with the fact that it is now a defacto pay site, but someone from Hockeyinsideout could have posted this information on this site.

Honest to god, Red Fisher’s columns read increasingly like a grandfather’s cranky lament that everything was better in the past. I have to assume they’re part of some kind of working retirement package from the Gazette?

You didn’t read the article did you? Come on, admit it. Because if you had you would notice that Red never once suggested that “everything was better in the past” and made no reference to today or comparisons to yesterday.

But I guess reading the article would be too much of a stretch. easier to just jump on the bandwagon.

I did read the article. I still read all of Red’s articles. And you’re right, he doesn’t outright suggest that everything was better in the past, at least not in this particular column. But the fact is, his viewpoint, both explicit and implicit (the latter by virtue of what he chooses to write about), is increasingly that. The Habs’ rich history is ingrained in my DNA, but I find living in the past to the degree that we as a fanbase tend to do is precisely what’s turning us, ever so steadily, into Leaf Nation 2.0, with ’93 emerging as our ’67.

Sometimes I feel like one of those old money families that live in a gigantic but dilapidated house they inherited, sitting on tired old furniture that was once top of the line, while clipping coupons and sh_tting on the nouveau rich for ‘doing it wrong’.

You make a good point about the dilapidated house though I don’t think it’s for lack of trying or out of a sense of entitlement on the part of the organization. It’s modern day sports, it’s a business and the bottom line comes first (butts in the seats, merchandise sales, preseason windfalls, etc.). The old guard, for whom Red is definitely a mouthpiece, still pines for the old days. I don’t even though I’m old(er) 😉

You sound like you’re from the same era as me.
I agree with awesom that Red has a tendency to dwell on past successes, but we had the inbred (arrogant) right-of-passage that the team would compete for the cup. Especially in the 70s.
But I can’t blame Red for reminiscing. I miss those days when you knew that it would be a long year of following the Habs, without discussions about “watching junior kids in training camp”, or hockey being a business. Unselfish athletes back then gave their all, and then went to their second jobs. Today, most live the sheltered life and if you want to see them, you have to be extremely creative. It’s a completely different era.

Watching highlights from other games where the teams have gotten involved in various fracases which have lead to injuries or suspensions, I am now so wishing we could have had more of our regular season players involved. Think of all these players could have been learning. How to board someone and figure out it is a suspendable offence.

It appears the championship game is nearly set between Buffalo and Nashivlle to see who will be crowned champion of all the world! And that shiny thing they are playing for, well who wouldn’t want it!http://www.flickr.com/photos/gamethyme/4148548425/

I was at the 4th game of last year’s playoff series against Bruins. No doubt #6 cost us that game and maybe that game cost us the series. I watched him yesterday, we got to find a way to get out of this player. He looked awful and when you watching the entire ice surface with him on it and he looks even worst. I am disappointed in Yemlin, he came in with an opportunity and he blew it. What’s our obligation to him? Can we pass on his contract?

You’re judging Yemelin way too quickly. He’s been adjusting to the NHL ice and the Habs system so be patient. He’s shown he can be a big hitter and I think that after a couple more games he’ll be a really solid defender and should do well at clearing people from the front of the net.

Perhaps but what worries me is the opportunity that was ahead of him and to come in out of shape raises serious questions, its evident in the games he’s played. Also come with conditions that if he doesn’t make the team he’s not going to Hamilton. Do we have a player we really want here!

Holy Jumpins !!!! The Habs lose a squeaker and another preseason loss to the Bruins!!! What’s it all coming too? “Chill out” as the saying goes and wait til the start of the season. The Habs have 2 preseason games left and are both against Tampa Bay.

JM should have an good idea on what line combinations are going to be set for game 1 against the Laffs. Wouldn’t you think? JM will be line juggling for weeks on end. Lets see who JM dresses for the remainding two games of preseason. This should be a good indication on who is injuried and who needs a few days of for therapy perhaps?

Just have to wait and see who is healthy enough to start the season? Does anybody have any idea who has not practice with the team so far during this preseason? Has AM practice at all for instance?

Gee, I wonder why PG doesn’t tell the media much??? I mean, they are all so reasonable and never exploit anything to do with the Habs. And the fans never take anything said out if context. You would think it would be an open door policy complete with ongoing open communication. As much as we fans would like to think the Habs are a public trust, it is not. Fans have their right to choose to buy tickets, follow the games on tv, listen and read about the games and team, and scream or applause all they want. But in the end it is a privately owned business selling a product. They really have no responsibility to the public. How they choose to market their business and sell their product is strictly their decision. Overall, Hab fans are very fortunate with ownerships of the present and past. But that should not be taken as fans entitlement to anything other than their right to choose.

I know. And I’m using Firefox. I can’t even bother to clear my cache. It gives me a reason to get back to work and stop wasting my time here. Hickey doesn’t say much that’s earth-shattering anyway (no offense – he’s a good writer, enjoyable, just it isn’t “news”).

I’m learning one thing this preseason, the comments from so many ignorant fans here are a whole lot more disappointing than the games. It’s like people know it’s preseason but insist we must win. What’s wrong with you? Like a drug addict, you know better but gotta get your fix anyway…..”Gotta win, gotta win – need to feel good, need to feel good…..we’re the the best, we’re best”. Freaking crazy some of the comments and attitudes on here. There are organization reasons why decisions have been and will continue to be made. Sorry if you don’t get it but please take a step back and try to understand…..it’s really not that difficult.

That’s the way it should be, look at how foolish Burke looks when he literally tells the media his whole game plan. He tells everyone he wants to move up in the draft, never does it, tell everyone he plans to get Richards July 1st, ends up with Connolly. And are you seriously suggestion we should have signed Wiz to that ugly ugly contact, 6M for a number 3-4 D-men, for 6 years?

Your forgetting that if we had just talked to the Wiz, he would have signed a 2 year contract with us for 1.75 per season. Also, we should have just made Hamrlik sign a 1 yr. deal for 1.1million. It is all PG’s fault, everyone on here knows he could have done those deals, he just didn’t play nice. The fact both players signed significant contracts (which if PG had done the same contracts people would have already burnt down the Phone Booth) is irrelevant at this point.

Umm, we are icing more AHLers and juniors than the other teams, and have been using a no-name defence of minor leaguers? If you don’t know what’s ‘wrong’ you aren’t paying attention. There’s nothing wrong but the fact exhibition and tryout games are televised, and people forget what they are. The Habs seem to want a good look at the minor league talent in this context, and it has been interesting to see the process. The results are meaningless.

i think people do forget what the exhibition is for , it is to prepare for the season that is about to start , not play some guy who going back to London for sure, playing beaulieu for 27 min proved nothing , wait until the PK an PP arnt working , why wait for game one to start practicing , players like AK should be playing more , and darche should be playing more , giving them a spot on the team is still a bad habit of JM

Early morning wishfull thinking.. I belive that Drew Doughty will be a hab! and here is why…

Between our logjam at D and spare “power forward” and consider LA’s problem at hand it just makes so much sense. A.Kost, Weber, my man Gorges,Beaulieu and maybe a pick.. this addresses somewhat of the departure of Drew with two NHL ready D men and a blue chip prospect, throw in A.Kost to play on a line with Kopitar(this also fills a void that Simmons left) add in a 1st round(?) .. also now think of LA’s situation, they have a player who thinks he is worth more than the team which is detrimental to the room so LA has no choice (baring a breakthrough in negotiations where everyone is happy) to move him to the Eastern conference so he won’t haunt them in the 82game grind. The salaries and contract terms all jive, even if we pay Drew at 6.0 mil we will have enough for Carry and PK for next summer… Also this is wishfull thinking on my behalf… but wow what a blue line we would have